The CSM would be an easy naked eye object in the sky. How do you hide it from being observed?

The CSM contains the propulsion for MOI, but you're leaving that behind. How is the LM inserted into lunar orbit? If you include a special built propulsion unit, then anyone who worked on that unit will know your lunar mission is not as advertised. You're creating a lot of witnesses to your deception.

How do you explain to all the people at Gruman why you want a LM capable of landing unmanned? Furthermore, an unmanned landing is very risky with a pretty high chance of failure. Let's say the LM is lost; what then do you do about the supposedly dead astronauts that are alive and well in LEO?

What happens if, at some future date, the landing sites are visited for real and there are no footprints or other sign of human activity?

It would take a large amount of propellant to return the LM to Earth orbit. You would have to provide a rather hefty propulsion unit, which has no reason for being if the mission is conducted as advertised. How do you have this unit built and included with your payload without thousands of people knowing about it? Furthermore, how do you explain this activity to the Soviets who are tracking the spacecraft?

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As Bob B has pointed out, the CSM would be easily visible as an unexplained satellite. Given the TLI's were observed from Earth, people might have wanted to know what the bright satellite on a slightly diverging path from the SIV-B was!

No, this can't work. The atronauts responded to the capcoms in real time, discussing the events of the day, such as the sports results. These transmissions go for extended periods of time (impossible if the astronauts are in LEO). The signals cannot be coming from LEO as they are continuous for hours, have the delays expected from the distances involved (although admittedly this could be faked) and these signals and telemetry are being gathered through the MSFN stations, which are directional. That couldn't be faked.

Interesting point! The Apollo 13 mission hit a snag because of an explosion in one of the cryo-oxygen tanks in the SM. The aftermath of this explosion was photographed (deep into the TLC) by an Earth based observer. The crew took photos of the damaged SM after jettison. But in your scenario, the SM should still be in LEO!

No, not really!

No, it wasn't designed to land unmanned, which would have required considerably more engineering on the part of Grumman (and no doubt raised a few eyebrows during design). Also, again as Bob B points out, automated landings are very risky things - remember that Apollo 11 would have originally landed in the middle of a field of boulders had Armstrong not guided it to a safer landing spot.

Two main problems here. Firstly, 'hidden' how? From the people at Grumman who designed and built it? From the hundreds of technicians who worked on it during fit out, mating, etc? ("Hey Jack! Is this 30 foot robotic arm on your blueprint? I must have an old version.....")

Secondly, the rock samples are differentiated. Core and soil samples need to be taken and particular rocks selected for their geological importance. A random sample taken from 'outside the door' will not provide differentiation. Oh, and your robotic arm would also have to have photographed the samples in situ.


Using what for fuel? TEI required an extended burn from the powerful SPS engine. The ascent stage didn't have nearly enough fuel for a TEI.


OK, let's allow somehow the LM acheived a TEI and successful 3-day TEC. Thanks to the Earth's gravity, the (ascent stage) of the LM arrives back in the vicinity of the Earth at (say) 25,000 kph. How are you going to slow it down with no fuel and in the time frames required to allow for an EOR?

Um. No, not really.


Said aeroplane would have to be the size of an aircraft hangar! Have a look at some of that footage - you can see the astronauts walking for hundreds of yards! In fact, in the J-mission footage, you have footage of them driving in the LRV for minutes at a time. That is one HUGE plane!

And given the footage goes for hours uninterrupted.....

Yeah, it's fun to think about, but the more you think about it, the more you realise that to fake it would have been probably harder than to actually go!

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"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

As I recall, there was just such a plot complication in Capricorn 1.

Ok, either the directional source of the signals or the correct delays can be faked, but not both. If the orbiting CSM responds directly, adding the expected delay, the signal will likely be coming from the wrong direction (quite possibly the wrong side of the planet).

If, however, the orbiting CSM relays it's responses through the unmanned LM (which is only possible constantly if the CSM is in a polar orbit which never puts the earth between it and the LM... c'mon, we're already stringing together a series of extreme improbabilities here, what's one more? :-$ ), then you get twice the expected delay.

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Bearer of the highly coveted "I found Venus in nine Apollo photos" sweatsocks.

DataCable^2008 A+

Thanks Datacable - yes, you could fake the directionality of the signal by uplinking the astronaut responses from LEO to the LM - but as you point out, you would have noticeably and unavoidably long delays in response times. And as you say, you would need a permanent line of sight between CSM & LM. You would also have to have faked all of the CSM telemetry data to reflect the mountain of minutiae such as fuel use during bogus mid-course corrections, vector states, O2 consumption etc etc etc.

Plus, the fact that the MSFN could separately track & receive telemetry from both the CSM & the LM after separation in Lunar Orbit throws a spanner in the works! :wink:

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

Maybe you could convince everyone that the speed of light is only half the accepted value. There seem to be a few people on this board who might bite on that idea!

Proof we really went to the moon - thanks to the Google add banner:


"Apollo Landing Sale
New & used Apollo Landing Check out the deals now!
www.ebay.com"

I think the last sentence is where you blew it; I don't think you can keep the mission specs the same. You keep trying to figure out a way in which Apollo could've been faked. My whole point is that Apollo couldn't have been faked, and I think there's been enough good reasons given in this thread to justify this opinion. If we are going to figure out a way to fake a manned lunar landing, we need to forget everything we know about Apollo and start over. My point is that if NASA faked the landings, the missions wouldn't have looked anything like Apollo as we know it.

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Hmm... well, you could paint the back side of the CSM black and keep it oriented tail down. Either that, or you could keep the CSM close enough to the S-II so that one wouldn't be easily distinguishable from the other. BTW, does anyone know how long the S-II stayed in space?

I was sort of hoping that the lack of Astronauts would help make up for that in part, plus with the saved weight, some sort of auxilary fuel bags might be able to be instaled to the inside of LM. Or, you could hire an alternate Engineering firm to design an unmanned but superficially identical LM, while the ones that the Grumman folks built would be secretly switched and discarded.

Abort "Landing"? Apollo 13?

Hope that everyone involved is dead or extremely elderly by the time a follow up mission is launched? Or hope that those are faked as well.

As mentioned above, either the "guts" of the fake LM(or as I would call it, the HB-LM are redesigned to accomdate this, and/or extra fuel is put in place of astronauts. This is probably a longshot, but since we're already stretching the facts here...

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It didn't. The second stage boosted the CSM/S-IVB stack up to around 110 miles altitude before separation. After separation, the S-IVB engine ignited for the final push into orbit, while the S-II fell back into the Atlantic Ocean off the West African coast.

After an orbit or two of the Earth to check out systems, the S-IVB was re-ignited to send the stack out of orbit and toward the moon. Note that nothing stays in Earth orbit.


This is just shifting the problem. It doesn't matter who designs and builds it. To design and build an LM, capable of landing unmanned on the moon, to integrate it with the Saturn V launch vehicle, etc would require a multitude of people. It's not the sort of thing you can knock up in your garden shed with a couple of buddies & a sixpack on a rainy weekend!

And you still haven't resolved the problems of telemetry/communications, tracking (by both MSFN & the Soviets!), how to wash off the velocity for EOR on return, etc, etc, etc , etc, etc

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

Oh, come on! In the movies all you need is a handsome guy, a mad scientist, and the mad scientist's comely daughter. That's good enough for me!

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Remember that an equivalent to the ~3200 m/sec delta-V you applied to take it from Earth orbit to a translunar trajectory must also be applied again to put the returning payload into Earth orbit. If it took something like an S-IVB to send it on the way, it would take something like that to brake it when it comes back.

But wait! the braking rocket (no matter what its configuration) will have to be boosted to the moon also, so the S-IVB would have to be much larger. To lift that stack, the rest of the Saturn-V would have to be bigger still.

We've heard about the awesome power of the Saturn-V; it's amazing to think that an equivalent amount of all that energy was applied to the capsule's heat shield when it re-entered the atmosphere!

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If you were going to try to return rock samples, why bother bringing them back to LEO. Just put them in a small return capsule, do a direct reentry, and recover the samples separately. You can always have fake rocks in the CM and do a switcheroo before anyone examines them. This would be far simpler then trying to carry all the propellant needed for Earth orbit insertion. (Not that I think any of this is doable.)

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All 382 kg of 'em over the 6 missions!

How much did the Soviets get on each of their sample returns? 5 or 6 grams?

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

Okay, so maybe in our alternate universe Lunar Landing, they get it to parking orbit and decide to keep it there for a few days. NASA might use the excuse that there was too much risk in allowing a controlled burn up unless there were alot of people watching it, so it didn't end up landing on somebody's hut. Since all available resources were being utilized sending people to the moon, they let it sit there until the nesecary equipment & personell could be spared. It might be hard to explain why the "CSM"(actually the HBLM) would have passed so close to the S-II, or whatever.(maybe there will be a S-III for that very purpose)

Jeez, just get an inside guy to leak the specs to whoever it is in Dreamland who designs all of our Black Projects that have the words "Stealth", "Advanced" or "X-##" in their names! Those guys don't spill their guts! Sheesh! LOL!

Well, you could try... Oh, crap. I'm out of Ideas. I was going to suggest that you doctor the tapes so that it sounds that way, but then there's the Russians. Then I was going to say that extra ~1.5 seconds could have been explained away as being part of some sort of buffer to keep people at home from hearing/seeing the astronauts dying in some sort of catastrophy, but that doesn't make sense, for about at least 50 different reasons that I won't bother to mention. Then I came up with model that got the time delay nearly right, but after thinking about it, I realized that it didn't work. So, short of,

a) somebody @ Los Alamos cracked Particle Entanglement or some other FTL communications device, or

b) the CIA discovers that the USSR has only a fraction of the Nukes they claim they do. The Missile Gap had been closed long before, and in order to keep us from launching our half of Armagedon, they agree to keep our secret,

I concede that this scenario is sufficently Debunked(unless some engineer/illusionist with expertice in the technical details of Apollo comes on this board). So, if any one here is still willing to speculate... How would it be done, if it could be done?

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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

-Calvin

I agree three is no logical explanation for the 382 kg of lunar samples other than manned landings. I was just speaking hypothetically, i.e. if you were attempting to return rocks robotically, albeit in much smaller quantity, you would probably have to use some sort of scenario like I described.

301 grams total from three different missions. This is about the mass of a single tennis ball sized rock.

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:-$ (don't tell anyone....)

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

This thread must be getting to me. I can't shake this mental image of a LM on the lunar surface - as we watch, a pair of Dr Seuss-style robotic arms (with gloves on) emerge from the hatch, extending out to randomly pick up rocks, put them into bags and slingshot them toward a distant Earth floating in the starry sky.

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

That must be why Martel had a model of the B2 on sale prior to the actual public unveiling of the then top secret plane.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

That's overstating the situation. The only part of the power of the Saturn V energy bled off by the heat shield is what was required to get the command module to the Moon (though that's certainly not trivial). The rest was used in:

- getting through the atmosphere
- pushing the upper stages along so they could do their job
- getting the S-IVB to escape velocity
- getting the service and lunar modules to the Moon

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Problems associated with things coming back to Earth could be solved by having the fake mission fail, with all the astronauts dying heroically in a battle against evil moon men. Then all the rest of the problems could be taken care of by using the existence of said moon men as a pretext for instituting martial law, drafting all able-bodied adults into the military, and suspending the Constitution. From there it's a small step to a fascist dictatorship, in which people will believe what they're REQUIRED to believe.

Wow, I hadn't thought of that. Heck, you could re-enter the CM way earlier(maybe even firing the escape tower before LEO is established) and drop it out of an airplane later, like many HB's like Kaysing claim. I was stuck thinking that the LM was a space-only vehicle, plus I was assuming the the samples would be carried by the astronauts coming out of the CM(does anyone know what sort of container the samples were packaged in when they left the capsule?) Granted, the telemetry still doesn't work, so I still think that this is implausable unless someone thinks of a good solution.

LOL! I was thinking some thing a bit more modest than that, perhaps just one manipulator about 8 feet or so, that was just able to pickup objects directly below the LM and deposit them through the hatch.

But yes, I see it now. Dr. Suess working closely along side Dr. Von Braun to perpetrate what would be the greatest deception in the history of mankind; the fact that Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin never set foot on the Moon; that the true heroes were Lunar Module Pilot Sam-I-Am and Commander The Lorax, while The Cat stayed aboard the Command Service Module(apparently the Hat wouldn't fit through the hatch into the LM). As the Lorax steped off the Footpad, he said some of the most inspiring and centimental words of the 20th century, "Hey, they told me there were Truffla Trees up here!"

LOL!

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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

-Calvin

A few more things that could be done would be to have a pair of boots attached at the arm and use it to make tracks around the lander so it appers people have walked there. You could plan a flag and several "experiments" in the same way. As a final trick before lift-off of the launch module, eject various parts of the eva suits and equipment out of the vehicle and onto the surface to appear that any astronauts had dumped it there. This covers the idea of future parties landing at the site and finding nothing. As long as they didn't locate the crashed lander and investigate it to closely, you could get away with it. The rock samples wuld be launched to Earth once the launch module was in space, then crash the lander as was done and let peple track the rocks back letting them believe they were the crew and CSM.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

It's gonna be interesting to see if any of these ideas re-surface on HB websites! We should copyright them, make Phil some money on licensing fees.

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LOL!

Actualy, at one point I started worrying that some one was going to accuse me of secretly being an HB for starting this thread.

I guess it doesn't help us that Hoaxed Apollo doesn't work, since the site will convieniently "forget" to include the flaws in any conspiracy theories. :^o

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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

-Calvin

Some time ago I thought about writing an essay like this in which I'd try to dream up a way of faking Apollo. I figured it would be a good way of debunking the hoax theory because the effort would inevitably show it couldn't be done. I also thought it might be a more effective way of getting the point across to the HBs, i.e. by actually trying to prove their point but finding insurmountable obstacles in the way.

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Problem is they just totally ignore insurmountable obstacles because they don't recognise them for what they are.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

This was from a time when I was naive and thought the HBs would actually listen to reason. Of course I know better now, which is why I never bothered to write the essay.

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But you don't do this for the HBs. They're beyond hope. There are a lot of people who just plain don't know, but they've seen the Fox show and it raised doubts. When you or Jay debate an HB here, there are people sitting on the sidelines or doing a web search for info, and they see that you guys know what you're talking about and the HBs are just making stuff up.

Or course I was speaking of the hardcore HBs. You make a good point in suggesting that such an essay might be a good way of getting the idea across to those who are simply confused. My idea is something like this:

Rather than debunk all the hoax claims point-by-point as is normally done, I would go on an imaginary journey and try to figure out how NASA could have faked it. I would generate a list of the evidence we currently have on Apollo. If Apollo was faked then this evidence must be fabricated, but how? I would suggest possible ways to fake the evidence but then also show all the problems and inconsistencies this generates. In the end the obvious conclusion would be that it couldn't be faked or, if it could, the technology and effort required would exceed that needed to do it for real.

Perhaps some day I'll return to this idea, but for now I've redirected my time and attention elsewhere.

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Tell me if this works...

To simulate conversations between mission control and the spacecraft the following procedure could be implemented:

The conversations would be simulated on the ground with the CAPCOM and astronauts separated so they can only hear each other through headphones. As each person speaks their words are delayed by the appropriate period of time, let's call it X seconds, before the other hears them. This way the conversation would take place exactly as it would if they were really talking over a great distance. For the conversation to sound as it would to someone listening in on Earth, the astronauts’ voices would have to be heard out sync with that of the CAPCOM by minus X seconds (just as the CAPCOM hears them in his headphones).

Let's now say the astronauts voices are secretly transmitted (can they be secretly transmitted?) to the unmanned spacecraft where they are immediately relayed back to Earth in the open on the appropriate frequency. This re-transmission would be heard 2X seconds after the words were first spoken. In order that the proper synchronization be heard on Earth, the CAPCOM's voice would have to be transmitted in the open delayed by X seconds. Therefore, anyone listening in on the transmissions would hear them properly synchronized and coming from the proper sources, and they would be delayed only X seconds from real-time.

Let's look at it another way and say I'm eavesdropping in on the transmissions. When the CAPCOM speaks to the astronaut, the astronaut and I both hear his voice delayed by one second. The astronaut’s response is immediately transmitted to the spacecraft and relayed back so I hear it 2X seconds after the CAPCOM's voice. When the astronaut speaks to the CAPCOM I hear the astronaut voice delayed by 2X seconds, but the CAPCOM hears it with only an X second delay. The CAPCOM's reply is delayed another X seconds before I hear it, for a total delay of 2X seconds. Thus the CAPCOM is heard by me to respond immediately to the astronaut. These response times are exactly as they should be if I were listening to a real conversation between mission control and a spacecraft far from Earth.

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